Last week the Allies' Northwestern Expeditionary Force (its newly announced official name) tried to scramble aboard Norway by way of the slushy, slippery, narrow, air-vulnerable ports left to them by the Germans above and below Trondheim. Its main effort was to get ashore and stake first military claim to the northwest coast of mid-Norway. Before the week ended the issue became whether German-held Trondheim was to be a beleaguered post in an Allied-held sector, or the key post of a German-held mid-Norway which the Allies had rashly invaded.
Two hundred charred heaps (where houses had stood) and a hospital (untouched) were all that remained last week of the coastal town of Namsos (see map). In the snow outside the hospital French doctors had stained a giant crimson cross, which German bombers respected. The Germans' ability to aim was proved by gaping holes in the little (800 ft.) town quay, where some 15,000 British and French troops had landed from small boats, from big transports (including the 21,833-ton Empress of Australia, see p. 25) that had to anchor out in the fjord.
Few troops were hurt in the first landings, which were made at night. But in the wooded hills from Namsos to Steinkjer at the head of Beitstad Fjord, and from there along the shore road toward Levanger, where the Germans were supposed to be waiting, advance detachments of the N. W. E. F. soon found that fighting "Jerry" in Norway was no taffy-pull.
First Stab at Trondheim. The narrow, rutted roads were knee-deep in late-April slush. German bombers and attack ships roared low over the pinetops. From southeast of Steinkjer, smashing echoes rolled into the mountains from the guns of German destroyers and a pocket battleship (probably the Liitzow) bottled up in Beitstad Fjord, as the Germans moved them up to support their land forces.
First Allied troops to encounter these obstacles were a battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and a battalion of Territorials, about 1,500 men in all, sent ahead to relieve the beleaguered Norse garrison down in Hegra fortress. The Nazi naval guns and bombing planes were specially deadly because the Allied advance force had no artillery, no anti-aircraft batteries, no air support, no anti-tank guns. They did not even have white capes for snow-fighting. They were shocked, and shot up, when they met the Germans only three miles below Steinkjer, at Vist. For most of the British boys it was their first fighting, after only one year of training. They soon lost half their men—dead, wounded or captured—and survivors were lucky to retire north of Steinkjer after the Germans had landed reinforcements in their rear from warships.
By week's end the N. W. E. F. had some fighter planes operating belatedly, launched from carriers off the coast and based on the ice of Lake Snäsa. German raiding diminished and went up to 10,000 feet instead of swooping in fearlessly at 500 feet. French Alpine troops and some of the Foreign Legion arrived, and with them came anti-aircraft guns and artillery. Thus the Allied Army north of Trondheim finally found its poise, gathered itself for an organized drive. But its early stumble cast a shadow over the whole enterprise, a shadow stretching back to London (see p. 29).